Novel light source development for robust multi-MHz retinal OCT

PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Ocular disease may arise anywhere in the human retina, which spans roughly 70% of the eye's internal surface. While optical coherence tomography (OCT) has become the premier technology for retinal disease diagnosis, current instruments are incapable of accessing the peripheral retina due to slow imaging speeds. This proposal seeks to enable next-generation OCT technology that will make diagnostic screening and visualization of both the central and peripheral retinal areas a reality; increasing imaging speed roughly 50-fold will allow wide-field retinal imaging without increasing procedure time. This advancement is empowered by a novel laser technology, stretched-pulse-mode-locking, recently developed for OCT by the founders of Bluebird Photonics. This Phase I STTR support will allow Bluebird to refine the SPML laser design and advance from a prototype to a turn-key, environmentally robust commercial laser. Specific aims include the implementation of a bias-free, Sagnac-loop amplitude modulator and the development of a closed-loop locking mechanism to ensure a stable synchronization between the modulator and the optical cavity resonance. The resulting laser will offer a significant advance over existing commercial OCT technology in speed (5 MHz vs ~100 kHz), cost, stability, reliability, and ease of integration. Commercial SPML lasers will serve as a catalyst for further development of ultrawide-field OCT instrumentation and support clinical evaluation across a range of diseases.